1. Genocide and Mass Violence in Asia: An Introduction

The late Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former General Secretary of the UN Kofi Annan (1938–2018) emphasized in his Nobel Lecture in 2001 that the “crime of all crimes” often begins with a single murder. This violent act does not only physically destroy a human being, but, as French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984) highlighted, power relations are established and new mechanisms of power are eventually installed or fortified within a society. The 20th century in particular witnessed countless attempts to restructure such power relations and, as a whole, the years between the First World War and the end of the Cold War, i.e. the period Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) called the “Age of Extremes,” were perhaps, as Kofi Annan correctly further remarked, “the deadliest in human history, devastated by innumerable conflicts, untold suffering, and unimaginable crimes.” The century was determined by imperial wars, two World Wars, the Cold War, and new wars at its end. These were often accompanied by forms of mass